1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems and methods of measuring and communicating an individual's health, and more particularly to electronic weight measurement devices. The invention also relates to methods for providing incentives based on a measured amount of weight loss.
2. Description of the Related Art
Today, 65% of adult Americans are overweight. Over 30% are obese. Healthcare costs are spiraling upward out of control. A major contributor to these escalating costs relates to our population being overweight. There is neither a lack of diet programs nor a lack of desire on the part of people to lose weight as evidenced by the weight loss industry having gross sales of $33B in 2001.
Current health care programs use an age-based pricing approach. If two individuals are 42 year old males with the same height, they pay the same premium, even if one individual has an ideal weight of 175 pounds (assuming a height of 5 feet 10 inches) and the other weighs 250 pounds. Currently, there is no external incentive to maintain a healthy weight.
Further, healthcare costs are affected dramatically by an individual's fitness and a significant impact could be made on the cost of healthcare if the American public could lose and maintain an acceptable lower body weight. Insurance carriers would experience lower claims, and consequently, the public would receive lower premiums.
Certainly, the $33B expenditure provides indisputable evidence that the American public has a sincere interest in taking off the extra pounds. It should come as no surprise that these diet programs and weight loss regimes are performing very poorly. In general, all of the diets have proven to be a dismal failure. They can be effective in the short term. Usually, after the initial period of weight loss, the dieter returns to the eating habits that were the cause of the overweight condition in the first place. As a result, 95% of dieters return to their pre-diet weight, or greater, within 5 years.
Though many programs have lowered individuals' weight levels for short periods of time, no solution has successfully helped individuals maintain the reduced weight levels over the long term. It is therefore desirable to provide an incentive program to maintain individual weight maintenance over the long term and to provide a weight loss incentive concept that is realistic, affordable, effective, and sustainable.